A blank sheet of paper had to become 45 minutes of constructive ESL teaching.

After a lot of trial and error, I finally figured out a simple recipe to create ESL lesson plans that work. Now, I’m passing along all those lessons learned to you.

How to Create an (Almost) Perfect ESL Lesson Plan from Scratch

The challenges of ESL lesson planning

While beginning to teach English in Korea, I only kept my job because of my incredibly patient co-teachers.

What made it so hard?

With no educational training, I was expected to teach English to Korean middle school students without a book. That is not easy to do, and I have repressed my horrible memories of the initial results. However, during my three years in Korea I (thankfully) got better. I fell into a formula for creating an ESL lesson plan that actually worked well for my students.

If any of this sounds familiar, then this blog is for you. Lesson planning can be stressful. From the start, remember this golden rule: perfection is not possible. You will never get it completely right, and that’s okay. With that truth in mind, let’s dive into how to make an ESL lesson plan.

Questions to ask before making a lesson plan

Give these questions some thought before you outline your ESL lesson plan. Knowing the answers will save you time and aggravation down the road.

1. Will you review what the school is teaching the students? Or will you create new learning goals? If the target language will be new, be sure it is appropriate for the students’ level.

2. Will you focus on speaking, reading, writing or reading? Or a combination? Your school may have a preference.

3. Will you teach alone or will you have help? The simplest games, for example, can be difficult to teach without translation unless you are very prepared.

The 6 crucial stages of ESL lesson planning

Step 1: Decide on your lesson plan objectives

This is the daunting part, but it is crucial that you know this from the start. Step 1 is the foundation of everything that follows. Your focus could be:

a song or a movie (be sure that your school permits this and that it will not disturb neighboring classrooms). Remember that audio must be played loudly for students to understand it since it is in a different language.

a specific grammar point such as forming questions or practicing the present progressive. Young or beginning learners might need to focus on the conjugation of only one specific verb such as “to be.” More advanced students could practice multiple irregular verb conjugations.

a general exercise such as understanding a short passage from a Harry Potter book.

Variety is the spice of the ESL classroom. Everyone learns differently. You need activities for visual and audio learners as well as doers.

Use games in the classroom. I believe in games in ESL classrooms. Used correctly, games let students test what they’ve learned in a relaxed, exciting way. The key is to make sure everyone participates. Without proper management, weaker or lazier students will quietly sit back and do nothing. In a 45 minute class, a game shouldn’t be longer than 12 minutes. Watch your motivations. There’s a big difference between playing Charades to review animal names vs. playing Hangman to let the teacher relax.

Consider the pros and cons of individual vs. group ESL work. No lesson is complete without individual work. Everyone needs time to practice material on their own. These activities also help shyer students, who can work quietly without the pressure of a spotlight. Group work, on the other hand, is useful too. Students can practice a dialogue with each other and learn from stronger partners. Team activities are often fun and give everyone a chance to relax a little. The drawback of group work, though, is that more advanced students tend to dominate the action. The right mix is essential.

Repeat recent ESL activities. You can repeat activities. How often depends on how popular the activity is. One of my classes insisted on reviewing vocabulary by playing Pictionary every week. For classes that meet once a week, it’s best to recycle activities once a month if you can. Otherwise, your students might start to lose interest – and perhaps you will as well.

Ignore bad advice from ESL teacher websites and chat rooms. There are some great ESL websites out there. Just as many offer very bad advice. Be careful who you listen to. Some teachers are only concerned with winning popularity contests and so play games at every opportunity. Be sure that you are listening to teachers who take their jobs seriously. Ignore those who only want a party atmosphere in their classes. Focus on advice that helps you structure your classes more while leaving time for fun.

Step 4: Create ESL materials and worksheets

It is true that the internet has a lot of free worksheets. By all means, use them. Time, however, is your greatest enemy. You first must know where to find quality ESL material. Until you have a few favorite sites, searching for worksheets on the internet will take a lot of your time. You are not done there. You still have to tailor it to your class’s level.

Here are some tips that could make things go faster:

Reuse workbook materials. Photocopy exercises from a textbook, white-out the answers and let students complete the questions as a review.

If you do make your own materials, remember to include 2 sample questions with answers at the very beginning. Kids and low-level students always need a clear model to look at before doing individual work.

For each grammar point, include 5-7 questions.

Include pictures on the worksheet. No one likes to look at straight, boring text.

Puzzles of any type are fun and can help to quiet down an energetic class. Boggle, word searches or riddles (make sure they aren’t too hard) are always a welcome challenge.

Hang onto your ESL materials for future classes. Do it. Especially if you stay at the same school for more than one year, you will be able to reuse your materials. Buy a good binder and stick nice copies of your materials in it. It pays to keep your hard work on your computer as well as a USB disk.

Step 5: Visual aids for ESL lessons

You will need visual aids which add depth and interest to your class. It could be a PowerPoint presentation, a restaurant menu from home or things from your kitchen. Whatever you choose, make sure it enhances your lesson.

Decide: Is a PowerPoint presentation necessary for this lesson? In class, PowerPoint presentations are good time savers. They can show answers to questions, saving you the trouble of using the blackboard. You can also use them to show interesting pictures. Try to minimize using them, however. They take a lot of time to create, and it is possible that your projector will not work that day. What would you do then?

Weigh the pros and cons of using videos in ESL classes. With today’s technological world, videos are a must. They quickly gain the attention of the class and are a sure hit. On the flip side, you must be very careful in selecting your videos. Even Disney movies have language that is sometimes too difficult for low-level students. Background music, multiple people talking and jokes that don’t transcend cultures are all traps to avoid. You must always have a back-up plan for class in case technology fails and suddenly there is no movie.

Find creative ways to add visual aids to your ESL class. Newspapers are an interesting prop. Even if the articles are too difficult, students can find the date, place of publication, price and the weather forecast. Jazz up a food vocabulary class by bringing a banana and an apple. For more advanced students, bring a colander, grater, bottle opener and other cooking items. Pass around currency from other countries.

Look at your lesson’s target language and see if anything already in your home applies. Try not to buy too much. It is not necessary to spend a lot of money on this.

Step 6: The final stages of lesson planning

You’ve made it. Believe me, I sincerely congratulate you. Before you head into class, do a few things first:

Get advice from other English teachers. Show your coworkers your ESL materials. Especially if you teach in a foreign country, their advice is invaluable. They understand your students better than you do and they will see gaps in logic, things that are too hard and cultural pitfalls. Take their advice and change your materials.

Don’t stress about the outcome of the first class. Nobody’s perfect, and you won’t be either. On the first day, make copies for only that day. You will probably come back to your desk with a few things to change for tomorrow. Save trees by not making copies that will only go in the recycle bin.

During class: troubleshooting your ESL lesson plan

My lesson is finished, but there’s still time on the clock.

Extra time on the clock can mean that your class was too advanced for the lesson, or maybe that you overestimated the time you needed. Either way, go back to your desk and decide what to do differently in the next class.

Have review games ready. Depending on the class, five minutes of vocabulary Hangman or Pictionary is legitimate. Let the students draw.

Prepare three or four easy questions for a short conversation with the class. Make the topic similar to your lesson so nothing comes out of left field.

Write a sentence from the lesson on the board. Give the class 15 seconds to memorize it. Erase the sentence and ask students to tell you what it was.

My lesson is too long.

Know what is a priority. What must you accomplish for the lesson to be a success? Try to focus on that while watching the time. No matter what happens, remember to leave 2 minutes for a quick review. Back at your desk, figure out what went wrong and decide what to change.

The students aren’t interested.

There could be a lot of reasons for this. Is the lesson too hard or too easy? Did they just get yelled at by their previous teacher for poor test results? Did three students just have a fight before you arrived and everyone got in trouble? Are you speaking too fast? Did your materials make sense?

The solution requires some reflection on what happened in order to fix it.

Final encouragement to ESL teachers

As an ESL teacher, you have a hard job that most people can’t do. Making an exciting lesson out of a blank piece of paper is a real challenge. Even seasoned teachers who only use a book have trouble. To save your sanity, remember these points:

Perfection will never be possible. That’s fine.

Whatever comes out of your imagination will be awesome.

Bells and whistles aren’t necessary. It is the content and the thought behind the lesson plan that matters.

When a lesson tanks, shrug it off. Fix what can be fixed. Forget about the rest.

Teaching is a 50/50 relationship between the student and the teacher. You can do everything right, but if the student doesn’t do his part you will still have trouble. Do what you can and leave it at that.

The ESL classroom is an incredibly fun and exciting place. It can also be aggravating at times. But, hey, you’ll never be bored!

Teaching non-English speakers your language is an exciting privilege that you will never forget. Best of luck.

Oh, and One More Thing…

If you liked these lesson tips, you’ll love using FluentU in your classroom. FluentU takes real-world videos—like music videos, cartoons, documentaries and more—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons for you and your students.

It’s got a huge collection of authentic English videos that people in the English-speaking world actually watch on the regular. There are tons of great choices there when you’re looking for songs for in-class activities.

On FluentU, all the videos are sorted by skill level and are carefully annotated for students. Words come with example sentences and definitions. Students will be able to add them to their own vocabulary lists, and even see how the words are used in other videos.

For example, if a student taps on the word “brought,” they’ll see this:

Plus, these great videos are all accompanied by interactive features and active learning tools for students, like multimedia flashcards and fun games like “fill in the blank.”

It’s perfect for in-class activities, group projects and solo homework assignments. Not to mention, it’s guaranteed to get your students excited about English!

If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to teach English with real-world videos.

By teaching grammar we not only give our students the means to express themselves, but we also fulfil their expectations of what learning a foreign language involves. Fortunately, nowadays with the emphasis on a communicative approach and a wealth of stimulating resources, teaching grammar does not necessarily mean endless conjugation of verbs or grammar translation.

Presentation, practice and production (PPP) Presentation

Which approach?

There are two main approaches to teaching grammar. These are the deductive and the inductive approach.

A deductive approach is when the rule is presented and the language is produced based on the rule. (The teacher gives the rule.)

An inductive approach is when the rule is inferred through some form of guided discovery. (The teacher gives the students a means to discover the rule for themselves.)

In other words, the former is more teacher centred and the latter more learner centred. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. In my own experience, the deductive approach is undoubtedly time saving and allows more time for practising the language items thus making it an effective approach with lower level students. The inductive approach, on the other hand, is often more beneficial to students who already have a base in the language as it encourages them to work things out for themselves based on their existing knowledge.

Presentation, practice and production (PPP)

A deductive approach often fits into a lesson structure known as PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production). The teacher presents the target language and then gives students the opportunity to practise it through very controlled activities. The final stage of the lesson gives the students the opportunity to practise the target language in freer activities which bring in other language elements.

In a 60-minute lesson each stage would last approximately 20 minutes. This model works well as it can be used for most isolated grammatical items. It also allows the teacher to time each stage of the lesson fairly accurately and to anticipate and be prepared for the problems students may encounter. It is less workable at higher levels when students need to compare and contrast several grammatical items at the same time and when their linguistic abilities are far less uniform.

Presentation

In this stage the teacher presents the new language in a meaningful context. I find that building up stories on the board, using realia or flashcards and miming are fun ways to present the language.

For example, when presenting the 2nd conditional, I often draw a picture of myself with thought bubbles of lots of money, a sports car, a big house and a world map.

I ask my students what I'm thinking about and then introduce the target language. "If I had a lot of money, I would buy a sports car and a big house."

I practise and drill the sentence orally before writing it on the board (positive, negative, question and short answer).

I then focus on form by asking the students questions. E.g."What do we use after 'if'?" and on meaning by asking the students questions to check that they have understood the concept (E.g."Do I have lots of money?" No."What am I doing?" Imagining.)

When I am satisfied that my students understand the form and the meaning, I move on to the practice stage of the lesson. During this stage of the lesson it is important to correct phonological and grammatical mistakes.

Practice

There are numerous activities which can be used for this stage including gap fill exercises, substitution drills, sentence transformations, split sentences, picture dictations, class questionnaires, reordering sentences and matching sentences to pictures.

It is important that the activities are fairly controlled at this stage as students have only just met the new language. Many students' books and workbooks have exercises and activities which can be used at this stage.

When teaching the 2nd conditional, I would use split sentences as a controlled practice activity. I give students lots of sentence halves and in pairs they try and match the beginnings and ends of the sentences. Example: "If I won the lottery," …. "I'd travel around the world."

I would then do a communicative follow up game like pelmanism or snap using the same sentence halves.

Production

Again there are numerous activities for this stage and what you choose will depend on the language you are teaching and on the level of your students. However, information gaps, role plays, interviews, simulations, find someone who, spot the differences between two pictures, picture cues, problem solving, personalisation activities and board games are all meaningful activities which give students the opportunity to practise the language more freely.

When teaching the 2nd conditional, I would try to personalise the lesson at this stage by giving students a list of question prompts to ask others in the class. Example: do / if / win the lottery?

Although the questions are controlled the students are given the opportunity to answer more spontaneously using other language items and thus the activity becomes much less predictable.

It is important to monitor and make a note of any errors so that you can build in class feedback and error analysis at the end of the lesson.

Conclusion

When teaching grammar, there are several factors we need to take into consideration and the following are some of the questions we should ask ourselves:

How useful and relevant is the language?

What other language do my students need to know in order to learn the new structure effectively?

What problems might my students face when learning the new language?

How can I make the lesson fun, meaningful and memorable?

Although I try to only use English when teaching a grammar lesson, it is sometimes beneficial to the students to make a comparison to L1 in the presentation stage. This is particularly true in the case of more problematic grammatical structures which students are not able to transfer to their own language.

It is also important to note that using the PPP model does not necessarily exclude using a more inductive approach since some form of learner-centred guided discovery could be built into the presentation stage. When presenting the 2nd conditional I sometimes present the language in context and then give the students a worksheet with a series of analysis questions to do in pairs.

PPP is one model for planning a lesson. Other models include TTT (Test, Teach, Test), ARC (Authentic use, Restricted use, Clarification and focus) and ESA (Engage, Study, Activate). All models have their advantages and disadvantages and I, like many other teachers I know, use different models depending on the lesson, class, level and learner styles.Further reading

Whether yours is their very first class or they have a little experience with English under their belts, your beginning level ESL students have a lot to learn.

Teaching a beginning level class can be very exciting, watching students learn, seeing the light bulbs come on, but it can also be very challenging. If you are teaching students with no English background, you may find yourself starting with the ABC’s. If your students have had some past experience with language learning, you may not need to cover the most basic building blocks, but you’ll still be tackling the foundations of the language. The good news is that beginning students learn quickly. You have plenty of topics to choose from, and you may have more freedom in the grammar topics you cover than teachers of more advanced classes do. So where do you start when it’s time to get ready for that beginner class?

How to Create a Grammar Lesson Plan for a Beginning ESL Class

1

Set Goals

The first step of any good lesson plan is determining the outcomes you are looking for. What grammatical concept are you going to teach? Common in beginning classrooms are the simple tenses, prepositions, adjective and adverb use, sentence structure, information questions and yes/no questions. Choose one, then think about what you want your students to accomplish. Do you want to introduce them to the topic? Give them practice? See them master a skill? The rest of your lesson plan will depend on the answers to these questions. In fact, they might all be goals for the same class but over multiple class periods.

2

Introduce the Topic

When you get to class, you should start your lesson by introducing the topic to your students. You should show them the structure you are teaching, and be sure to give them one or two simple examples. You will also want to explain why they need to know this topic since it will motivate your students and help them put a tangible context to what they are learning. Of course, since they are beginners you may not be able to get all the why’s across, but do what you can. The point is for your students to see the grammatical concept as practical and useful.

3

Give Examples

After you introduce the topic to your students, be sure to give plenty of correct examples of the grammatical structure. Simple examples are good, but don’t be afraid to show your students something a little more complex. You are not expecting them to produce the structure like a native speaker at this point, but giving them realistic examples shows them what they may be able to do once they have their foundation in place. Some teachers shy away from using realia in the beginning classroom, but it’s never too early for your students to see how language is really used. In your examples, include one or more from authentic language sources. Try looking in a newspaper, a blog or an advertisement for examples, or listen to the people around you and note how these native speakers use language in their everyday speech.

4

Practice, Practice

Now that your students have seen the target structure used correctly, it’s time to give them some practice. Exercises in grammar books will do the job, but your students will benefit from a little extra effort and planning on your part. Try to include a variety of activities that will appeal to several different learning styles. Try using props (like index cards or post its) to arrange words in a sentence. Have oral practice as a group and with partners. Sing a song if you know one, or make one up. Direct your students to a website where they can work on interactive quizzes. Get your students up and moving, linking physical movement with grammatical concepts. The more variety they have in their practice session, the more easily your students will remember the concept you are teaching. Don’t leave out good old written practice, but saving it for homework is best.

5

Assess

Have your students learned the concept you are teaching? Probably, if you have followed this plan step by step, but it is still necessary to do some type of assessment with your class. Assessment doesn’t have to be taking a test, and you certainly don’t want to spring a quiz on your students the first day you teach a concept. An assessment simply measures how well your students are performing with the given grammatical concept and whether or not they are meeting the goals you set. Once you have reached the end of your lesson, go back to the goals you set in step one. Check to see if each student has accomplished each goal you outlined. You can do this through simple observation, or you can require more formal written evidence. Vary your assessment according to the goal you have set. If a majority of your students have not met your objective, you know you will have to follow up tomorrow with more activities to help them reach your goals.

Planning a grammar lesson really isn’t very hard if you take it step by step.

Preparation, modeling and practice are key. Also, checking to make sure your students have learned what you were teaching will ensure the success of your grammar lesson. Give your students positive feedback when you see them succeeding, and move on to the next challenge once they do.

How many days do you typically spend teaching one grammatical concept to beginners?

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Variety is the spice of the ESL classroom. Everyone learns differently. You need activities for visual and audio learners as well as doers.

Use games in the classroom. I believe in games in ESL classrooms. Used correctly, games let students test what they’ve learned in a relaxed, exciting way. The key is to make sure everyone participates. Without proper management, weaker or lazier students will quietly sit back and do nothing. In a 45 minute class, a game shouldn’t be longer than 12 minutes. Watch your motivations. There’s a big difference between playing Charades to review animal names vs. playing Hangman to let the teacher relax.

Consider the pros and cons of individual vs.

Group work, on the other hand, is useful too. Students can practice a dialogue with each other and learn from stronger partners. Team activities are often fun and give everyone a chance to relax a little. The drawback of group work, though, is that more advanced students tend to dominate the action. The right mix is essential.

Repeat recent ESL activities. You can repeat activities. How often depends on how popular the activity is. One of my classes insisted on reviewing vocabulary by playing Pictionary every week. For classes that meet once a week, it’s best to recycle activities once a month if you can. Otherwise, your students might start to lose interest – and perhaps you will as well.

Ignore bad advice from ESL teacher websites and chat rooms.

Be sure that you are listening to teachers who take their jobs seriously. Ignore those who only want a party atmosphere in their classes. Focus on advice that helps you structure your classes more while leaving time for fun.

Step 4: Create ESL materials and worksheets

It is true that the internet has a lot of free worksheets. By all means, use them. Time, however, is your greatest enemy. You first must know where to find quality ESL material. Until you have a few favorite sites, searching for worksheets on the internet will take a lot of your time. You are not done there. You still have to tailor it to your class’s level.

Here are some tips that could make things go faster:

Reuse workbook materials. Photocopy exercises from a textbook, white-out the answers and let students complete the questions as a review.

For each grammar point, include 5-7 questions.

Include pictures on the worksheet. No one likes to look at straight, boring text.

Puzzles of any type are fun and can help to quiet down an energetic class. Boggle, word searches or riddles (make sure they aren’t too hard) are always a welcome challenge.

Hang onto your ESL materials for future classes. Do it. Especially if you stay at the same school for more than one year, you will be able to reuse your materials. Buy a good binder and stick nice copies of your materials in it. It pays to keep your hard work on your computer as well as a USB disk.

Step 5: Visual aids for ESL lessons

You will need visual aids which add depth and interest to your class.

In class, PowerPoint presentations are good time savers. They can show answers to questions, saving you the trouble of using the blackboard. You can also use them to show interesting pictures. Try to minimize using them, however. They take a lot of time to create, and it is possible that your projector will not work that day. What would you do then?

Weigh the pros and cons of using videos in ESL classes. With today’s technological world, videos are a must. They quickly gain the attention of the class and are a sure hit. On the flip side, you must be very careful in selecting your videos. Even Disney movies have language that is sometimes too difficult for low-level students. Background music, multiple people talking and jokes that don’t transcend cultures are all traps to avoid.

Newspapers are an interesting prop. Even if the articles are too difficult, students can find the date, place of publication, price and the weather forecast. Jazz up a food vocabulary class by bringing a banana and an apple. For more advanced students, bring a colander, grater, bottle opener and other cooking items. Pass around currency from other countries.

Look at your lesson’s target language and see if anything already in your home applies. Try not to buy too much. It is not necessary to spend a lot of money on this.

Step 6: The final stages of lesson planning

You’ve made it. Believe me, I sincerely congratulate you. Before you head into class, do a few things first: